The Meathead Vote

For liberal baby boomers, it's always 1972.

By

James Taranto

December 1, 2011

In hilarious fashion, National Journal's Reid Wilson picks up on this week's predominant theme, Democrats and demographics. He paints a sunny picture of President Obama's re-election prospects based on Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin's observation that the minority population (which strongly supported Obama in 2008) has grown relative to whites without college degrees (who did not):

The coalition Obama's team used to win in 2008 is expanding, while the coalition that fueled Republican wins in 2010 is dwindling.

Take Ohio, the perpetual battleground state. In 2008, Obama won the backing of 83 percent of minority voters, who constituted 17 percent of the electorate, according to exit polls. He won 49 percent of college-educated whites (33 percent of the electorate) and 44 percent of noncollege whites (50 percent of the electorate). That means he won 52.28 percent of the two-party vote. . . .

Account for the aforementioned demographic changes, however, and the picture gets slightly better for the president. If minorities account for 18 percent of the electorate, college-educated whites make up 35 percent and noncollege whites are 47 percent. Using the Teixeira and Halpin estimate, Obama's portion of the two-party vote would increase to 52.77 percent--a 1-point shift.

These shifts mean Obama's coalition has grown in every swing state, increasing 2.4 points in Pennsylvania; almost 3 points in Nevada; 2.75 points in Virginia; and at least 1 point each in Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, and North Carolina.

Now, he just needs to win those voters back.

That last line is priceless, isn't it? It reminds us of the old Steve Martin routine about how to become a millionaire and never pay taxes: "First, get a million dollars."

And actually just matching his 2008 proportions among demographic categories wouldn't be enough for Obama to realize Reid's slightly-better-than-2008 outcome. It would also be necessary for turnout to be as high among Obama-leaning demographics and as low among Republican-leaning ones as it was then. The Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib has some numbers suggesting that's unlikely:

Today, the voters who seem most motivated are the anti-Obama voters--that is, Republicans. In the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, voters were asked whether they were more or less enthusiastic than usual about the 2012 election. A majority of Republicans, 56%, said they were more enthusiastic. By contrast, only 43% of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic.

Other readings from the poll produced the same kind of picture of a fired-up Republican base and a more lethargic Democratic one. Among conservatives, 59% said that they were more enthusiastic than usual; among liberals, the number was just 38%. Among those who voted for Sen. McCain in 2008, 57% reported more enthusiasm this time. Among those who voted for Mr. Obama, the reading was 41%.

To be sure, "enthusiasm" is sometimes overrated. A wet blanket's vote counts the same as a firecracker's--but that assumes the former can be troubled to get himself to the polls.

Even more persuasively, William Galston of the center-left Brookings Institution takes a closer look at the demographics and finds trouble for the president. A recent Gallup poll found Obama with a 43% approval rating, down 10 points from his 53% vote total in 2008. An approval rating is not precisely analogous to a vote total, since an election poses a choice in which a voter may either approve or disapprove of both candidates. But what's telling is that for some crucial demographic groups, the gap between vote total then and approval now is considerably greater than average.

By this measure, Obama has lost 13 points among independents (from 52% of the vote to 39% approval), 14 points among unmarried voters (65% to 51%), 16 points among Latinos (67% to 51%) and 18 points among 18- to 29-year-olds (66% to 48%). "Unless things turn around considerably in the next eleven months," Galston writes, "key parts of Obama's winning 2008 coalition are poised to deliver both lower margins and smaller shares of the electorate than they did in 2008."

Galston makes an especially good point with respect to the so-called youth vote:

Demography shapes political orientations, of course. But so do events. And this is especially true for voters who don't enter the political arena with well-established views and habits. While there's good reason to believe that today's young adults will remain more comfortable with diversity--of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation--than are their parents and grandparents, there's no guarantee that this will translate into a liberal or pro-government orientation across the board. A thought-experiment: Suppose a Republican were to win the presidency in 2012, implemented a broadly conservative economic agenda, and that after four years the job market for young adults had improved substantially. Is it plausible that this scenario would have no impact on their long-term political orientation?

If you're a liberal Democrat, please resist any suicidal urges. Galston's thought experiment, after all, is a three-parter--GOP victory, conservative policies, job-market recovery--none of which are guaranteed to come to pass. His point, however, is well taken: The "youth vote" is surely the weakest link in the 2008 Obama coalition, as evidenced by that 18-point fall-off.

Why did 18- to 29-year-old voters support Obama by 2 to 1 in 2008 when older groups were more closely divided? Part of it, no doubt, had to do with generational attitudes toward what Galston calls "diversity," though surely more with respect to gays than racial and ethnic minorities. (Anyone under 60 in 2008 had lived his entire adult life in the post-civil rights era.) Part was the natural liberalism of youth: People who have not yet settled into adult responsibilities are more apt to be attracted by fuzzy-headed nostrums about saving the planet and spreading the wealth around.

And a lot of it was just that Obama seemed cool and new in contrast with a stale and unpleasant status quo and an elderly, crotchety opponent. No doubt more than a few older voters preferred him for that reason too, but glamour and novelty are all the more alluring to the young, whose political preferences are less anchored in experience or habit.

Much of the hype over the Obama "youth vote" can be attributed to the nostalgia of liberal baby boomers for their own youth, circa 1972. The 26th Amendment having been ratified the previous year, it was the first election in which people born between 1948 and 1954, a seven-year span, were permitted to vote nationwide. The "youth candidate" was George McGovern, although exit polls show he got only 46% of the 18-29 vote to President Nixon's 52%.

ENLARGE

Meatheads for McGovern
'All in the Family'/YouTube

Still, Nixon's overall margin was 61% to 38%, so there was something of a generation gap. If you're too young to remember and want to see it dramatized, tune in to an old episode of "All in the Family," a contemporaneous sitcom in which Mike "Meathead" Stivic, the liberal college student played by Rob Reiner (born in 1947 and now a portly sexagenarian with a bald pate and a white beard) clashes endlessly with "white working-class" father-in-law Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O'Connor (born in 1924).

To the extent that Meathead represented a mass political movement, it was one focused on a single issue: ending the draft. Once Nixon signed the law abolishing conscription in 1973, the army of Meatheads dissolved. But liberal baby boomers do maintain an outsize influence on the culture, since they essentially run most media and educational institutions.

That cultural influence played no small part in making Obama so attractive to the young voters of 2008. But because the basis for that attraction was shallow, it is proving evanescent. Young voters today are very much up for grabs. They are all but certain to be more Republican in 2012 than 2008. After that, who knows?

What we do know is that, unlike in 1972, there is a serious and deep generational clash of interests that has not taken full political shape but inevitably will. The federal government spends a vast and quickly expanding amount of money supporting the old through Social Security and Medicare--Ponzi schemes sold as insurance policies, which are unsustainable on their current course.

The old believe that they are due these benefits for having paid into the system, and their position is not without justice. But so is the argument that the young will inevitably make--that it is unfair to tax them to pay for benefits they know they will never see. If you're in middle age, which side of the divide you end up on will depend on how quickly the crisis develops. (The Obama administration, by suppressing the private economy and expanding the entitlement state, has hastened the day of reckoning.)

Scaring old people with threats of Republican benefit cuts has been a staple of Democratic campaigns for decades. It will likely be a big part of Obama's re-election campaign. If it doesn't work, it will be because the reality of the Obama economy is scarier than the hypothetical prospect of cuts. Yet ironically, regardless of the outcome of the next election, it will not be too long before serious entitlement reform is not only possible but necessary--and not only economically necessary but politically necessary, once younger voters understand the stakes for them.

The Wright Stuff The Daily Caller reports that Obama supporters are "warning Republicans against reviving [the president's] relationship with controversial ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright." That means reviving it as an issue, not trying to get Obama and Wright to make nice:

Ted Devine, a Democratic operative who worked for Al Gore and John Kerry, recently accused Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign of using . . . images of a black church in an ad "to bring back Rev. Wright and race."

"As someone who does this for a living, there is absolutely no way that's not intentional," Devine told The Hill about the video, which doesn't include any mention of Wright but does feature two brief cutaway shots to an all-black audience. "There is no other rational explanation for that scene other than to suggest a racial reference, and most likely invoke Jeremiah Wright."

So Devine is bringing up Jeremiah Wright in an effort to make sure that nobody brings up Jeremiah Wright. In case you've forgotten, Jeremiah Wright was the man who said "God damn America" and blamed the U.S. for 9/11, and whom Obama described as his "spiritual mentor." We mention that for informational purposes only.

This is from the same article:

Drew Westin, a professor at Emory University and a prominent progressive commentator, also saw racial overtones in the Romney ad.

"There are three things about the racial composition of the people in the background: For Obama, whenever they're shown clearly, they're a mix of whites and blacks. Whenever they're either presented in dark light so you can't see, or presented at a speed that makes them subliminal, they're all black," Westin told the Huffington Post [sic] last week.

"For Romney, there isn't a black person in the background in any of the scenes he's in. It's inconceivable that his team didn't think to make sure there was at least some diversity in the crowds he was speaking to unless the goal was to juxtapose subliminal black people against white people for Romney," Westin said.

There are two explanations for this. One is that these guys have a pathological obsession with race. The other is that they think it's really important to keep hammering home the idea that Republicans are racist so as to encourage blacks to vote for Obama. These explanations are not mutually exclusive.

Trivial Pursuit The Associated Press has another one of those ridiculous "fact check" articles, only this one actually deals with facts. It seems that some Republican candidates for president have made some minor factual errors:

On Wednesday, [Newt] Gingrich told voters packed into Tommy's Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C., that he would sign legislation repealing health care and Wall Street overhauls when he takes office on Jan. 21, 2013.

"My intent will be to ask the new Congress to stay in session when they are sworn in on Jan. 3 and to pass--and hold at the desk until I'm sworn in on the 21st--to pass the repeal of Obamacare and the repeal of Dodd-Frank and the repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley so that I can sign them on the 21st," Gingrich told the packed restaurant.

One problem: the Constitution that Gingrich constantly cites during his presidential campaign says the transition of power after an election takes place on Jan. 20.

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said Gingrich would assume powers at noon on Jan. 20, 2013, following the 20th Amendment of the Constitution. Because that day is a Sunday, the Inauguration's festivities would be scheduled on Jan. 21 of that year. Ronald Reagan followed a similar schedule for his second inaugural on Monday, Jan. 21, 1985.

Even so, Gingrich was wrong to say "I'm sworn in on the 21st."

Plus he hasn't even been elected yet! For all we know, Gingrich will never be sworn in!

The U.S. President has come under fire today after referring to the "English" instead of the British Embassy in his condemnation of the violence that broke out at the building in Iran yesterday. . . .

In an interview yesterday, Mr Obama said: "All of us are deeply disturbed by the, err, crashing of, err, the English Embassy, err, the embassy of the United Kingdom."

By calling it the "embassy of the United Kingdom," he got it wrong a second time.

OK, we get why it's "British" and not "English." But what in the world is wrong with "embassy of the United Kingdom"? According to the Mail: "Nile Gardiner, a blogger on The Foundry who led the criticism, said: 'In case the President is unaware, England forms part of Great Britain, which also includes Scotland and Wales, though not Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. . . .' "

Thanks for clearing that up, but does Northern Ireland have its own embassies now?

The AP faults Michele Bachmann for another apparent embassy-related error: "She would support the United States shutting down its embassy in Tehran--but there is no U.S. Embassy in Iran's capital."

If you want to get technical, though--and the AP has made abundantly clear that it does--that isn't what she said, as this USA Today piece makes clear:

James Novogrod, an NBC News reporter embedded with the Bachmann campaign, tweeted the GOP presidential hopeful's flub, which was made in front of an Iowa audience. Here's his post on Twitter:

Bachmann tells Waverly IA crowd that were she president, "we wouldn't have an American embassy in Iran." The US broke ties w Iran in 1980.

But wait. We didn't have an embassy in Iraq when George W. Bush became president. By the time he left office, we did. Isn't Bachmann actually saying that if she becomes president, she will ensure there is no regime change in Tehran?

It's going to be a traffic nightmare today as President Barack Obama is in town for three fundraisers, coinciding with the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

Obama is landing at JFK around 5 p.m., choppering in Marine One to Wall Street, and then attending three events in Greenwich Village, the Upper East Side, and West Midtown. Each neighborhood will be subject to a traffic freeze while the President is on the move.

Hey, what's the difference between Barack Obama and "Occupy Wall Street"? One demonizes the wealthy and ties up traffic, the other lives in tents.

That's Reassuring "I always tell Malia and Sasha, look, you guys, I don't worry about you. . . . They're on a path that is going to be successful, even if the country as a whole is not successful."--Barack Obama to New York supporters, Nov. 30

A More Innocent Time Penn State University has "purchased several .XXX domains," Internet addresses intended for pornographic websites, FoxNews.com reports:

In September, Penn State spokesman Jeffrey Hermann said the university purchased four .xxx domains--Penn State, PSU, Nittany Lions and The Pennsylvania State University--or the most popular of its federally registered trademarks.

"The cost was $200 per trademark, but this purchase should also prevent someone from buying a domain that includes our trademark along with other words," Hermann wrote FoxNews.com in an email. "Our purchase of nittanylion.xxx is intended to prevent someone from purchasing a url such as nittanyliongirls."

"Nittanyliongirls?" In light of recent events at PSU, that sounds like wishful thinking.

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